Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Loose Pucks: After Their Captain Fell, They Rose - A True Story of Tragedy, Brotherhood, and an Impossible Championship Run

Loose Pucks: After Their Captain Fell, They Rose - A True Story of Tragedy, Brotherhood, and an Impossible Championship Run

Meyer, Mark
Berrafato, Matthew T.

Paperback

Young Adult Nonfiction

ISBN13: 9798252127989
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Mar 17 2026
Pages: 598
Weight: 1.74
Height: 1.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
December 3, 1975.
Michael Schwass crashed to the ice during the game against archrival Glenbrook North. He was 16 years old. By the time the ambulance left the rink, the doctors were not sure he would survive the night.

He had shattered his vertebrae. He would never walk again.

Three months later, on March 25, 1976, a wheelchair rolled into the Randhurst Twin Ice Arena at the Notre Dame Ice Dons' state championship game playing against the very same team Glenbrook North in which he suffered his injury.

Michael Schwass - jersey #21, the heart of this team - had come to watch his brothers win the Illinois State title they had promised to win for him.

They kept their promise. Final score: Notre Dame 4, Glenbrook North 3.

LOOSE PUCKS is the memoir of that season - told by goalie Matt Berrafato (#31), who has spent 50 years carrying that winter in his chest.

It is not a hockey story. Hockey is only the stage.

This is a story about what happens when human beings commit to each other completely - when a team becomes a brotherhood, when a brotherhood faces the unthinkable, and when the only answer left is the question Michael Schwass lived by for the rest of his life:

Now what?

Michael spent the next 34 years as a quadriplegic living his life with a body that didn't work and never knowing what was next. Michael's legacy is about teaching those life lessons he did learn that allowed him to live an extraordinary life.

He died on September 10, 2010, at the age of 53. He was, without question, the most accomplished person in every room he ever entered.

This book is his eulogy. And your mirror.

If you have ever loved something completely, lost something that mattered, or stood at a crossroads asking yourself what comes next - this book was written for you. You don't need to have played hockey. You need to have been human.

With a foreword by legendary Chicago announcer Wayne Messmer, and co-authored with Mark Meyer, LOOSE PUCKS is the rare memoir that hands you a story and asks what you see in it.

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Young Adult Nonfiction

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